


Untitled

by thegleegeneration



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-08-23 14:58:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8332126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegleegeneration/pseuds/thegleegeneration
Summary: Ah, yes. The usual 4-month-long absence from posting.





	1. Chapter 1

Myka wondered how hard it would be to pretend that she wasn’t freaking out at that exact moment. Because she was. And she wasn’t sure if she could act well enough to pretend that everything was okay. If someone would ask her why she was so shaken up, she would probably crack and blurt out everything that happened the previous night. They wouldn’t believe her, of course; only think that she was weirder than their 10 years’ worth of acquaintanceship.

            She shook her head and put her bags down by the stack of chairs against the wall, and pulled out one for herself. Myka sighed as she sat down, her mind flashing back to the events of the previous night and how exactly it happened.

            The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. She and Melissa had been talking after class, about what would happen if she and Masato Hijirikawa (her favorite character from that anime _Uta no Prince-_ sama) got together, if they ended up living together or marrying or having pets… And then they started off to how it would be with Myka and Natsuki Shinomiya, then Maisie and Otoya, Alex and Tokiya, and then all four of them living together or with their biases.

            From there it spiraled further to what would happen if they were actually students in Saotome Academy, the school that those anime boys were enrolled in, and Myka (true to her hastiness in starting something, but never getting around to finish it) immediately hashed out a premise, and promised Melissa the first chapter to the fan fiction she was going to be writing that night.

            It started innocently enough. Myka took out one of her many notebooks and her favorite mechanical pencil and started writing, her loopy scrawl slowly covering the first page. Many erasures and rewrites later, she finally finished the first chapter. Content with what she’d written down, and prepared to show Melissa what she’d done the next day, Myka held her arms straight out to a stretch, making the joins pop and the muscles a good kind of numb. As she brought her hands down, she knocked over her pencil to the floor.

            Myka bent down to pick it up and as she was straightening back up, she froze, felt heat near her face. Odd because she didn’t have her laptop with her, only the notebook and her pencil case, plus a tumbler of water somewhere near. None of those could generate a heat strong enough to be felt a foot away.

            She braced a hand on the table edge and turned her head. Her eyes were wide as she saw almost half of the page she’d just been writing on being engulfed in light. It was a hot, white light that seemed to be travelling down the page, searing everything in its wake. For a second Myka was dejected, seeing that hours’ worth of work were getting gobbled up by flames. But when the telltale smells of burning paper didn’t reach her nose, she was more confused than ever.

            Eventually, the whole page had been covered with light, and it seemed to seep down into the graphite. It began to dim down, and eventually faded out.

            From the shock of seeing her notebook suddenly glowing, Myka had skidded the chair backwards and right into the bannister. A few moments after the light disappeared, she plucked up the courage to check out the remains of the strange phenomenon. And what she saw was absolutely stunning.

            _Rainbow lights_ , she thought now, sitting on the white monoblock chair and wringing her hands in anxiety. The buzzing noise of students chatting did nothing to calm her down. _My pencil has rainbow powers. What the heck._ The event had never happened before last night (obviously), and she ended up tossing and turning in bed the whole night, trying to think of a possible explanation as to how it happened.

            She couldn’t come up with anything logical, or reasonable. Except maybe for magic. Which she believed in, but never really witnessed in person. Magic that wasn’t a parlor trick or a miracle from Heaven or the use of science to disprove the very concept. It was such a long shot, and the odds of it suddenly happening to her were too low to take it seriously. So she scrapped that explanation, and went circling back to square one.

            The thump of a heavy bag on the ground jarred her from her thoughts, Melissa’s heavy sigh making her look up, and abruptly grab her arm as she was sitting down on a chair she grabbed.

            _Stay calm, Myka_ , she told herself. _You need to stay calm so you can explain the whole thing clearly_. To be honest, Myka wasn't 100% sure if she should tell Melissa about the events last night, at least, not until she figured out exactly _why_ and _how_ it happened.

            But then again, Melissa was her best friend. And it was partly her fault that she started writing this story in the first place. More than anyone else, she deserved to know what had happened…

            “What, what is it?” Melissa asked, eyes wide and confused, an eyebrow raised in inquiry. Okay, fine, Myka was going to tell her.

            But as soon as she opened her mouth, the security guard at the gates decided to ring the bell, and Myka flinched and let out a breath. Damn it. With her a part of the student government, she wouldn’t be able to chat with Melissa while falling in for the flag salute. Or during the morning classes because their whole year had practice for their cheer dance. Stupid sports festival.

            Myka slapped a palm to her face, mindful of her glasses, and stifled a yawn before saying, “I finished the first chapter. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

            Melissa still had that confused and suspicious look in her eye, but nodded. Myka let go of her arm and went off to yell at people to fall in line.


	2. Chapter 2

Melissa took a seat on the cold concrete, a small sigh escaping through her parched mouth. She looked around for her face towel and water bottle and tried to not focus on the slight soreness of her legs, brought on by various repetitions of the new dance combo. Or rather, various repetitions of the old combo, that Tony wanted to make perfect.

            When she found it (and had to reposition herself because _why did she put her water bottle there?_ ), she hurriedly took a long drink while walking to the water fountain. Sometimes she wondered why she was short, because, as much as she liked dancing (which is on the level of she-can-live-without-it like) her height called for her to dance _more_ than the other, taller people. Or at least dance more complicated steps. Steps that required actually _touching somebody_.

            She heaved another sigh as she refilled her bottle, and watched Tony and Sam teach new choreography to the other (read: _taller_ ) people which, unfortunately, included Myka.

            Seriously, damn her height sometimes. Why did her best friend have to be as tall as one of those things in _Attack on Titan_? (That was obviously a hyperbole, but as far as Melissa was concerned, she saw no difference.)

            But with Myka being as tall as she was, it meant that the potential time they could spend with each other during practices decreased drastically than when they were in class. The school grounds were too small to accommodate 58 students that were supposed to be evenly-spaced beside one another while learning equally space-consuming choreography. The obvious, tried-and-tested solution for that was to split everyone into groups as soon as they got their positions, and teach the choreography by batch. It was efficient, but at the same time, very annoying in this case.

            Why?

            Because Melissa was just dying to hear about what got Myka so frazzled and shell-shocked this morning. Though it wasn’t like Melissa wasn’t used to her friend’s over-the-top reactions (because she was, very much), she just hadn’t seen her look like that—eyes wide, fingers fiddling with one another, or clenched tightly into her skirt, teeth biting her lower lip. As much as she puts that aloof mask on, it was still disconcerting to see someone like that.

            Now, as she watched Myka dance like she wasn’t quite sure where to place her long limbs, she wondered just what exactly happened to warrant a reaction like that. Did something terrible happen? Did a family member—knock on wood—get hurt? She scratched that thought out immediately. Myka didn’t look so shaken up anymore, so it couldn’t be that. Nothing heavy was in their schedules either, so it probably wasn’t study-related.

            Was it maybe the thing they’d talked about yesterday? About _UtaPri_? Myka did say she finished the first chapter, but unless she started off the story with a tragedy, Melissa didn’t think she should be _too_ broken up about it.

            A hand tapped her shoulder, and she started, not realizing she’d been spacing out. And let the water overflow. Melissa turned to her classmate as she capped the bottle and shook the remaining water from her hand.

            “Tony said to get some more practice in, and then we’ll run it with the others later,” Thea said sweetly, a thumb pointing behind her at the other members of her batch who were already in position. Join us when you’re done, okay?”

            “Sure,” Melissa replied and followed immediately.

            Honestly, this wasn’t the time to be distracted. She had to get as much practice in with the allotted time they were given, so she could at least reassure herself that she did her best if—and this was a _very_ big if—they lost, and no one could blame her.

            Whatever was the case, she’d know what happened later at lunch. And if Myka still refused to spill the beans, well… She’d figure out what to do by then.

* * *

 

“So, what were you gonna tell me this morning?” Melissa asked. Her voice bounced off the walls of the, fortunately, empty bathroom they were in. They were changing back into their uniforms for the rest of the day; Myka’s fingers paused for just a moment as she knotted her tie.

            Oh, man. In the heat and haze of morning practices, she totally forgot about the notebook (which was good, in part, because she had to concentrate). Myka was only glad that they didn’t have enough time between batches to talk about it.

            But now they had a full hour. Or forty-five minutes, at the most, because Myka still had to work. She had to figure out quick what she should say before Melissa could question her further.

            So, like the evasive person she is, she finished up quickly, gathered her things and rushed out the door. She threw a, “I’ll go on ahead—meet you at a table later,” before almost slamming the door on her way out.

            _Okay, that was weird_ , Melissa thought. Usually they’d go up together, so as to avoid potential gabbing from a lot of certain people. Maybe she had a lot of stuff to bring down? Melissa could’ve waited for her and helped carry her stuff.

            Honestly, her best friend was so weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, yes. The usual 4-month-long absence from posting.


	3. Chapter 3

For the umpteenth time since she left Melissa in the bathroom, Myka wondered how she was going to drop the bomb to her friends. Because admitting that she wrote a literal rainbow-colored story was kind of a big ball to drop. It wasn’t as simple as, “So, guys, I was writing last night and the words on the paper started glowing in rainbow colors!”

            Yeah, that was not gonna happen.

            She fished out the notebook, now safe and sound in a clear plastic envelope. It even had a pencil in it, for convenience. With rowdy friends like hers (and, okay—she was just as rowdy) it was bound to get spilled on with something at some point in time, she figured it would be a good idea to seal it in a plastic envelope when it wasn’t in use.

            Then again, if something would spill while she was writing, the plastic envelope would be rendered useless. She really didn’t think this through, did she.

            Myka heaved a sigh and stepped out of the row of chairs, wallet and notebook tucked close in her arms. She walked to the front of the room and held the door open for a couple of stragglers. “Guys, get downstairs, please,” she called. The rule that all the rooms should be locked during the lunch break was so stupid, but since she was part of the student council, she couldn’t exactly veto it.

            As the last boys from her class trundled down the stairs, she gave a last cursory sweep around the room before turning off the lights and locking the door behind her. Myka took a big gulp, as if she was jumping off a cliff and into her doom, and trudged down the winding steps.

* * *

 

Myka didn’t like to think she was popular with any one group. With kids, maybe, because for some reason, they just liked her. The older generation probably thought of her as reliable and responsible and all that stuff, but not to the point of being popular with them. She couldn’t really say she was popular with the 7th graders, either. More like... she was idolized? _Respected_ was probably a better term.

            She had nothing against them. She even volunteered herself for making them line up after lunch and checking if their shirts were tucked in properly. She was technically the lowest ranking officer in the council, so it was the least she could do to help out the grade’s representative to get the feel of things. So yeah, Myka liked them. Some days she would go as far as to say that they liked her, too. Or at least tolerated her.

            The point was, she knew so many of the 7th graders by name, at this point in the school year, that she was thoroughly distracted by their greetings as soon as she reached the ground floor of the main building.

            So before she knew it, she was already trekking up the slope. Which was in the same direction as their regular table. Which meant it would take just a short walk to reach there, and face her doom.

            An exaggeration. But a completely deserved one.

            Said exaggeration was going to commence in T-minus approximately 3.5 minutes. Mental meltdown in progress.

            She didn’t even know how to break the ice yet, and she was already halfway up the slope, dang it!

            How should she tell them, even? Break it to them gently? Warn them that, _Hey, so I kind of… um… wrote the first chapter last night and… um… the letters, they… kind of… glowed…?_

            Myka stopped in her tracks for a moment, an obvious grimace on her face. She wiped it away and started walking again, thinking up another direction to go.

            Maybe she could just drop the notebook on the table and let them have it, like hungry lion cubs fighting over a quarter-pound slab of meat. Yeah, that would be interesting to watch. But the notebook might get ripped, so scratch that idea.

            “Ate Myka!” Maisie’s yell snapped her out of her thoughts.

            Shi--. How did she not notice she was already at the table? She still had no idea how to go about this not-really-problematic problem, and she was already making to sit down on the vacant chair, between Alex and Melissa. The envelope was still clutched tightly to her chest, the heart beneath it beating wildly against her ribcage.

            Before she could lose her mind, she almost shoved the notebook at Melissa and mumbled something about getting food, before shooting off in the direction of the crowd surrounding the glass cases displaying an array of snacks.

            The notebook could wait. The responsibility of explaining what the hell happened last night could wait. It could all wait until she got food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A.K.A. the introspection chapter that nobody really wanted.
> 
> lol


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The silence was long.

When Myka came back to the table, hands carrying a sandwich, a bottle of cold water, and a coffee sachet, Melissa and Maisie had their heads together. She set down her purchases just as the two finished up. They raised their heads and looked at each other, then Alex, then Myka, then each other again.

            “This is what you were all fidgety about this morning?” Melissa asked.

            “Yeah!” Myka almost yelled. “Because it’s weird!”

            Melissa quirked her brow. “Why is it weird?”

            The tall girl gestured wildly to the notebook. “ _Because the letters we glowing with rainbow colors._ ”

            Alex spoke up, “Didn’t you write this with a rainbow pen or something?”

            “Yeah, you had one of those, right?” Melissa said.

            “Yeah, I did, but I did _not_ write that with a rainbow pen. That thing ran out a long time ago, anyway.” Myka made to sit down next to Alex when they retracted from the pen questions and focused on something else.

            “How long did it take you to write this, Ate Myka?” Maisie asked.

            “About… two hours?” Myka answered. “I was on a roll last night.” A little laugh escaped her, almost ironically, considering after the finished the first chapter, all thought and drive of continuing on with the second chapter disappeared because of the Glowy Incident, as she deigned to call it in her head.

            “When’s the next chapter?” Melissa spoke up, flipping between the two pages and skimming it.

            “Umm…” The writer tried to stall. Even she didn’t know when she’ll be able to write again. January was a really busy time for her, what with the constant Student Council duties, the preparation for the English Fest, and the start of meetings for what the Thespian Society is going to do for their concert this year.

            Myka asked herself why she took on so many commitments this year.

            “Tomorrow? If I can sneak in a little writing today and when I get home tonight,” she replied, unsure. She saw Maisie brighten up at the answer.

            “So, can we touch it?” Alex asked.

            “Ha, ha, no.” Myka curtly replied.

            “Why not?” she whined.

            “Because I don’t know what’s gonna happen if you guys touch it. Don’t you think it’s weird that the letters suddenly glowed last night even though I only used a regular pencil? I mean, does that _not_ freak you guys out?” Myka sat back, trying to regulate her breathing after the mini-outburst.

            “Like, it seriously glowed?” Maisie asked incredulously.

            “Why don’t you just tell us what happened from the beginning?” Melissa finally asked, still confused as to what happened. Myka hadn’t explained things yet, and she wanted to know so she could give an opinion.

            So Myka told them about what happened last night, how she sat down to write with her regular mechanical pencil for two straight hours, when everything she wrote suddenly started heating up and glowing. She told them everything, even the theories that kept her up that night, albeit in more detail.

            When she finished, everyone at the table was looking at her like she was crazy. Or maybe they were just too confused. Myka knew her argument was bad, in the realm of impossible. She didn’t even have anyone to vouch for her, so the chance of someone actually believing her story was slim to none.

            But how else was she supposed to explain the Glowy Incident rationally without compromising the truth?

            It was quiet around the table, but the chatter of the students and the sound of metal utensils scraping against plastic plates were still buzzing around them. It was like the four of them were trapped in a little bubble of silence, frozen in time while the world around them carried on.

            “Did you touch it?” someone asked.

            Myka shook her head, looking at the notebook, still open on the first page in front of Melissa. She was way too freaked out the previous night to do anything but shove the notebook in her bag.

            “Where’s the pencil you used?” Myka took it out of her skirt pocket, teared off a piece of scratch paper and scribbled on it.

            Nothing happened. The scratches were still in normal pencil lead.

            Melissa took the pen from her and flipped to the last page of the notebook. She wrote, “My name is Melissa” on the paper, and waited.

            Still nothing.

            Alex and Maisie also took turns writing on the page, but nothing happened, either. No heat, no light, no glowing rainbow letters. If Myka was to be believed, then there was something weird going on here. Why was only Myka able to see the glowing letters when she wrote in the notebook? Would it really not work if it was any one of the three of them?

            “Ate Myka, have you tried writing in it since last night?” Maisie asked. Myka visibly flinched.

            “Uh, no,” she said, nervous, and clearly knowing where this conversation was going. “I haven’t had any time since last night.”

            Someone shoved the pencil in her hand and the notebook in front of her, turned to the page immediately after the last page of the first chapter.

            “Write something!” Alex said, forcing her hand onto the paper. “Even just the title!”

            _Oh,_ hell _no!_ Myka’s brain immediately thought. She was still freaked out from last night, and if they thought she was going to write in that thing again, they were totally wrong.

            But at the same time, Myka wanted them to believe her, and they weren’t going to unless she showed them some proof. Aside from that, she couldn’t deny she was curious to see if it happens again. If it did, then she would be a witness to magic (or at least that’s what she was calling it—she had no other explanation for it) _twice_.

            Then again, it was scary. It was something she couldn’t explain. She was asking all the questions, but the answers just wouldn’t come, and that scared her. But if it didn’t work a second time, then…   

            Well, she wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

            But her friends were curious, too. It was possible that _she_ was the only one who can make the words glow because she was the one writing the story. Why her, though? If Melissa or Maisie or Alex was the one writing it, would the letters glow for her, too?

            There were so many questions she didn’t have answers to. If she could make the writing glow again, would she get them?

            Myka stared at the page for a second before gearing up to write. Her hand shook slightly as she touched the pencil to the paper. Taking a deep breath, she wrote down “Chapter Two” quickly, as if she was ripping off a band aid. She clutched the pencil in both hands when she was done.

            For a moment, it seemed like nothing was going to happen. Myka let her tense shoulders relax and almost breathed a sigh of relief.

            Then the _C_ started glowing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least the wait this time wasn't as long.

Myka’s eyes bugged out just as there was a chorus squeaks, gasps, and/or _Oh my god_ ’s; she wasn’t quite sure because of the blood pumping in her ears. A second later, she was cupping the glowing _C_ and the rest of the title, in case they started lighting up, too.

                There was no way in hell she was touching those letters directly, nope. Nuh-uh. Nah. Nein.

                She didn’t notice her hand hit the plastic cup filled with strawberry juice until she felt something cold drip down her fingers. She hastily pulled the notebook away and held it close to her chest. Just in time because the cup started falling. Alex caught it before it could completely fall over. Someone wiped the wet patch down with a piece of scratch paper.

                Myka couldn’t hear anything as she set the notebook down. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

                _Why_ was this happening? Why here, in s high school in the Philippines, of all places? Why to her, a simple high school student who just loved anime?

                And why was she the only one who could make the glowing words? Her little circle of friends was just like her—they were just simple students, too, and they loved this anime just as much. Why was it that she was blessed—if she could even call it that—with the gift of making the words she wrote in this notebook glow?

                Speaking of which, what would even happen if she touched them? She didn’t even want to think of it before, but things changed. She really was the only one who can make the letters glow, and she was sure they glowed for a reason.

                Was she going to, like, get incinerated if she touched them? Myka so wanted to find out, but this whole thing was so freaky, she didn’t think she could even move from the shock.

                Her thoughts were interrupted by Alex saying, “I wanna touch it.”

                There was a collective “NO” from around the table.

                “But it looks so cool,” she defended.

                “So is the prospect of eating a tub of ice cream, until you get a sore throat,” Melissa whipped. Myka agreed wholeheartedly through rapid nodding and affirmative sounds.

                “What’s the harm, though?” Maisie’s small voice said.

                It made Myka snap out of her shocked mutism and say, “ _Everything!_ ” She calmed down from her outburst, heart thudding steadily in her chest, and continued. “I mean, it’s magic. That’s the only explanation I can think of, and it’s beyond our realm of comprehension. And what if we try touching it and someone gets hurt?”

                “But we won’t know _for sure_ if the effects are harmful is we don’t at least _try_ ,” Maisie countered.

                She had a point. She had a point, but she should remember where they were: at school, with approximately 500 people. They didn’t know how much damage this kind of magic could cause, and Myka didn’t want to risk the safety of innocent students who were having lunch or doing their homework (or both).

                Myka seriously wanted to know what it could do, more than anyone of the four of them. But it was just too risky.

                She told them as much and an argument ensued—Alex and Maisie teaming up, and Myka and Melissa defending why they shouldn’t touch it. At one point, Alex grabbed the notebook from the middle of the table and settled it onto her lap, flipping the long page back and forth and looking for another point to argue. The “Chapter Two” that Myka had written was glowing steadily, just _tempting_ her to touch it.

                But she wasn’t going to until she and Maisie won the argument.

                Alex picked up her strawberry drink. As she dragged it off the edge of the table, the condensation from the cup dripped down the sides and onto the edge of the recently-marked page. Alex made to wipe it away as she took a drink.

                See, the notebook and her hand was still hidden by the table, and the others were too distracted arguing to properly pay attention to what was happening. They only recalled the timeline of events when they came to a little later.

                Event 1: The sweat from the cold drink dripped onto the page, near the “Chapter Two”.

                Event 2: Alex poised a thumb next to the watermark, but took a second to drink.

                Event 3: She decided to wipe it right away anyway because the water might leave a stain.

                Event 4: Her thumb made a swiping motion down, and her fingertip brushed a part of the new writing.

                Event 5: Everything went white.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sike! It's two chapters today!
> 
> If anyone asks, I was on a roll at work.

Alex blinked up at the bright light, trying to get her eyes to adjust fast. When the blurriness and haze cleared, she sat upright and scooted out of the way. That chandelier above her head was way too big to stay up there for an indefinite time, and she did not want to be in the way when it fell.

                Her heart was racing after getting out of potential danger. She willed it to calm down, but it only sped up as she looked around. She twisted to look behind her, tilted her head up so far she thought her spine was going to snap. Alex leaned too far out too far and fell on her back, letting out a little yelp as she hit the ground.

                What she saw in front of her when he opened her eyes again had her pausing. And then hurriedly getting on her knees to just. Stare. At the huge, marvelous thing in front of her.

                She heard groans beside her, someone waking up. But she didn’t care to see who it was; she just couldn’t look away from the _thing_ in front of her. (She kept referring to it as a _thing_ because she deemed she was just hallucinating.)

                But the surprised gasps beside her proved that thought wrong. It couldn’t be that they were all hallucinating the same thing. Which meant that… this was all real?

                Alex heard one final gasp, and an almost whispered, “Oh my god.”

                Yup. They were all seeing the same thing. They’ve seen it so many times before—on jackets, notebooks, handkerchiefs, clear folders, and lots of other things. They’ve seen it in videos and online shops, sketched on paper or in art renders.

                It was something they knew so well, but didn’t want to accept was actually right in front of them.

                It was the Saotome Academy crest.

 

They were staring at a blown-up, wooden 3D sculpture thing of the Saotome Academy crest.

Realistically, theoretically, it shouldn’t be possible. Magic didn’t exist, Myka reasoned with herself, not really. Magic was sleights of hand and parlor tricks at kids’ birthday parties. That was the magic she knew, and wanted to believe. But some part of her still hoped that real magic existed in her world somewhere, and that she could get a taste of what it looked like.

                Suddenly being thrust into a completely other dimension, if that was what this was, was _not_ what she wished for.

                “Someone pinch me, I must be dreaming,” she accidentally said, and felt a sting on her arm. She quickly withdrew her arm with an “ow” and gently rubbed the pinched area. Dang, Melissa _actually_ pinched her, but—.

                Oh my god.

                It hurt.

                It _hurt_.

                She _wasn’t_ dreaming.

                _Oh my god._

                “ _OH MY GOD_ ,” Myka screamed, getting up on her feet and jumping around, restless and excited and scared and everything in between.

                The next thing she knew, all her friends were screaming and jumping along with her. They all finally got a good look at each other and screamed some more because they were _not_ wearing these outfits before they fell unconscious.

                Instead of their garish pink uniforms, they were all wearing casual— _fashionable—_ clothes. Even their physical features actually changed.

                The hugest difference was with Maisie. She turned into a cute brunette. Wavy ash brown hair fell to her back, dirty blonde and caramel streaks only emphasizing the new color. Chartreuse eyes flitted back and forth excitedly, taking in everything they could see. A shimmery rose gold blouse was paired with a short and pleated black skirt. The trendy black heels that were everywhere on social media gave her some additional height, and a simple cat silhouette pendant hung from her neck to her chest. They knew Maisie had a thing for fashionable clothes, but not often did she have the opportunity to flaunt her impressive collection.

                As for Melissa’s hair, it presented something of an optical illusion. It looked black, but when the light shone just right, they weren’t sure if they were seeing _black_ or a blue undertone. Her eyes were a striking cornflower blue that oddly went well with her new hair. She wore a tight-knit sweater dress that went to her thighs. Being the conservatively-dressed person she was, she also had dark-wash boyfriend jeans underneath. Pristine white sneakers tied up the look. She was so modestly dressed compared to the other three, but she was comfortable, so what the hell.

                But “modest” was probably not the word that best described Alex’s new appearance. Sure, her hair was still dark, but she’d always had lighter hair than everyone else, so it was a bit disconcerting. Her usual wavy hair was in a sleek lob as well. Side-swept bangs partially covered her cognac eyes. The hair was the least surprising thing about her, though. Whenever they would meet up outside school, she would show up in shorts and a simple t-shirt. Well, goodbye to that because now it seemed her whole wardrobe was purchased right out of Hot Topic: A black hoodie dress with an embossed logo of an obscure band at the front, strategically ripped leggings, shiny combat boots, and a choker with a metal skull charm hanging from a small chain. They couldn’t exactly say it was a bad look for her, but she looked like a legit emo.

                Myka probably had the least noticeable differences. She was still just as tall, but her still-dark hair shined burgundy when the light hit the curls. Behind her circular glasses that looked like they were plucked right out of the _Harry Potter_ books, were vivid, emerald green eyes. Now, probably the most surprising thing about her whole appearance was her clothes. Whenever they saw one another outside classes, she would always be wearing pants and a loose t-shirt. But now she was sporting high-waist navy shorts folded at the hem, and a loose peasant top in a bright sunflower yellow. A nondescript rose gold chain hung around her neck, and her usual watch and bracelets dangled from her wrist. Comfortable-looking black sneakers hugged her feet.

                All of them had nice make-up on; even the more inexperienced Alex and Myka have eyeliner so sharp they could cut clean through paper. Maisie was sporting a cute look with pink shadow and brown-red lips. Melissa’s nude eyes and lips went well with her simple look. Alex’s was just really dark and matched with her outfit, and Myka was going for nondescript eyes and the bold red lips of the 20s.

                Needless to say, they were all very amazed over their new appearances, and it was full of screaming for a solid minute.

                “Oh my god,” Myka panted, running a hand through her already unruly hair. It was as long as ever, only not it was naturally wavy, just like she always wanted. “How is this possible, oh my god…”

                None of the others could offer any explanation. Maisie and Melissa bounced assumptions and questions at each other.

“Why are we here?”

                “Why do we not look the same here?”

                “ _What is going on?!_ ”

                “This is so weird, what is happening?”

                Alex and Myka screamed at each other while jumping around and gripping each other’s arms.

                Amidst their confusion and worried questions was a short cough, like someone clearing their throat and politely saying, “Do you guys need any help?”

                Everyone froze and stopped talking all at once. Despite arriving in this dimension just a scant few minutes ago, they knew that voice well. _Very_ well, in fact. It’s graced their computer and laptop speakers many times before, as well as their headphones when they listened to his upbeat songs.

                As weird as this day was, they knew not to actually hope that the voice belonged to the person they were thinking. They hoped it was him, but at the same time it just _couldn’t be_.

                Slowly, they all started to turn around and holy sh—,

                It was _him_.

                It was _Ittoki Otoya_ , in the flesh.


End file.
